Human expression embodies a myriad of communication media including speech, music, writing, visual art and associated media such as images, drawings, photographs, etc. With respect to each of these mediums, each person is endowed with specific abilities, limitations and associated preferences.
For example, in the case of audio media, every person possesses a unique hearing profile, which serves as a lens through which they experience the world of sound. Similarly, each person also possesses unique visual abilities. Human auditory perception varies widely between people due to differences physiological makeup, differences in listening environments.
The ability to adapt media to a person's unique preferences plays a significant role in the quality of communication as well as its enjoyment. Because in-person communication is often not possible due to geographic constraints, telecommunication networks have become the primary conduit for the exchange of multimedia information.
Modern communication networks including public packet networks such as the Internet have enabled a rich palette of multi-media real-time communication services including audio, images, video, text, etc. The ubiquitous nature of established communication networks necessitates their dominant use. Typically, users of these communication networks subscribe to one more services offered by associated network providers.
However, in general, the ability to enjoy personalized media using these networks is not possible. As far as the user is concerned, because these networks are closed systems, the associated network services are fixed insofar as user's ability to dynamically control or shape the associated media characteristics. Thus, in general it is not possible to personalize or tune media transmitted by telecommunication networks to the individual preferences or needs of individual users. Thus, a user of any given communication network is required to accept the service characteristics of media as defined by the service provider. Adapting the media to a user's preferences on a physical device is also generally not possible. For example, in the case of cellular communication services the APIs providing access to media streams delivered by the network are not available to end users. The same situation holds true for PSTN (“Public Switched Telephone Network”) calls or typical VoIP (“Voice over Internet Protocol”) calls.
With respect to audio media, telecommunication networks providing audio transport have evolved from circuit switched analog telephone networks to a heterogeneous array of transport, signaling and media including digital, packet-based systems such as VoIP as well as wireless communication networks using cellular technology. Although the quality of telephonic audio has improved in general with the introduction of digital VoIP systems, in other realms such as cellular communications, audio quality has degraded due to bandwidth contention on those networks. In particular, bandwidth limitations on typical cellular networks combined with the existence of ambient noise in the environment typically results in severely degraded audio on a cellular call.
Although the underlying transport media for audio communications have become highly sophisticated, the ability to personalize audio for particular users of communication systems is in general nonexistent or at best significantly constrained. For example, in the case of audio media in a telephony session such as an ordinary telephone call over the PSTN, the hearing profiles of individual users of the network and the equipment infrastructure underlying the call such as playback device, microphone and codecs significantly influence the audio quality and characteristics of the call. The audio on a call is typically affected by a host of other dynamic conditions such as time-varying network conditions, changing ambient environments, etc. However, current network infrastructure precludes the tuning the media on a call to adapt to these static and dynamic variables.
For persons with hearing impairment, the use of external local devices such a hearing aid during communications sessions such as telephone calls presents a number of drawbacks. Hearing aids are subject to feedback when using a handset or headset, which detracts significantly from call quality. Hearing aids that connect via a Bluetooth or other wireless connection require the use of multiple devices, which is cumbersome. Hearing aids that support the use of Bluetooth are prohibitively expensive and offer limited processing power and flexibility determined by the hearing aid itself. Further, most hearing aid users desire to remove their hearing aids during telephone use due to the cumbersome nature of using a handset in conjunction with a hearing aid.
Hearing aids that have specific algorithms designed to adapt to different ambient environments nevertheless perform poorly with regard to telephone communications, given great variances in the performance of end-user communications devices and the quality of audio signals generated by telephonic communications networks, including the PSTN, cellular telephone networks, computer networks supporting VoIP communications, and combinations thereof. In addition, hearing aids are typically cumbersome to use with end-user communications devices that do not support hands-free use.
Current communication networks do not provide the capability for convenient dissemination of high-quality, high-bandwidth audio that preserves the full spectrum of audio signals that human beings can perceive. For example, since most speech information resides below 4 KHz, most telephone networks utilize low-pass filtering below 8 KHz and sample at 8 KHz.